A father and daughter who belonged to a fringe Chinese religious group were executed Monday for beating a woman to death at a McDonald's restaurant, reportedly after she rebuffed their attempts to recruit her.

Chinese factory activity contracted in January for a second straight month, a closely watched private survey showed Monday, a day after the government announced the first official decline in the sector in more than two years.

A pilot program for cross-border foreign exchange payments will be expanded to support the development of cross-border e-commerce and limit the risks associated with online payments involving foreign currencies, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange announced on Thursday.

Chinese regulators accused e-commerce giant Alibaba of permitting sales of fake goods and hurting consumers in a report that was withheld until now to avoid disrupting the company's U.S. stock market debut.

China's yuan has become the world's fifth most widely used payment currency, with the value of cross-border deals settled in it more than doubling in 2014, data from transactions organization SWIFT showed Wednesday.

Despite declining smartphone shipments by Samsung Electronics Co, which still accounted for the most smartphones running on the Android operating system last year, those using systems developed by Google Inc. are expected to see their market share grow at a double-digit pace in 2015, thanks to the rise of Chinese device makers.